What is it this time?
Curious, Li Miao opened the app and clicked on the notification.
A pop-up window appeared:
[Congratulations, Haunted House Owner Li Miao, on possessing your first dungeon. Main Mission Progress: Haunted House Initial Construction.]
[Reward: Permanent Increase in Mental Power.]
There was a small note below: Ghosts confuse the eye and bewitch the mind. After your mental power increases, you will no longer be bewildered by ghosts, nor will your body be tainted by yin energy.
Li Miao claimed the reward.
She felt a flash of white light around her, followed by a shiver. Then, a warm sensation rose from the soles of her feet.
Li Miao felt her mental state improve drastically; her whole body was filled with strength.
Ever since she was adopted by her uncle, she had been sickly and listless. Everyone said she was lazy and didn’t like to work, but Li Miao knew she wasn’t lazy—her body was just weak.
Now, she had shaken off that feeling of weakness and felt completely energized.
Meanwhile, far away in Ning City, Li Yang suddenly sneezed and rubbed her nose.
Beside her, Xi Zimo asked with concern, “Did you catch a cold? Is it chilly?”
Li Yang smiled confidently. “I won’t catch a cold. My health is excellent; I never get sick.”
On the other side of the world, Li Si, who was abroad, suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion. He was so tired he just wanted to sleep.
His friend was shocked. “Si, aren’t you known as the Iron Man? You can stay up for 72 hours and still be full of energy. What’s wrong today? It’s only 12 AM. Hahaha, you haven’t gone soft, have you?”
“Get lost!” Li Si kicked his bad influence of a friend and yawned. “I’m done playing. There’s an e-sports competition in two days. I need to rest up and save my energy.”
Li Miao had no idea what was happening with Li Yang and Li Si. She was currently studying her mental power.
She looked up at Ruhua and the Painted Skin demon.
She discovered that after her mental power increased, her perception of them had changed.
When she first saw Ruhua, she had been completely stunned by her beauty, drawn into her aura, feeling her sorrow, and genuinely pitying her.
But now, she saw Ruhua as just an ordinary female ghost.
She wasn’t affected by her at all.
As for the Painted Skin demon, even if he ripped off his human skin, Li Miao wouldn’t feel scared. She just thought he looked disgusting.
Ruhua walked up to Li Miao and circled her, looking her up and down. “You seem different. I can feel that I can’t bewitch you anymore. You’re a tough nut to crack.”
The Painted Skin demon also leaned in. “Before, your life fire was weak, and you were easily tainted by ghostly energy. But now, your yang energy is strong. I barely dare to get close.”
Hearing the two ghosts, Li Miao was overjoyed.
This app really works!
If this continued, she wouldn’t have to die, and she could reclaim her destiny.
While Li Miao rejoiced over her improved condition at the haunted house, the workers by the roadside were discussing the pockmarked man and his crew.
They hadn’t come back for three days. Had something happened to that frail little girl?
Someone suggested calling the police.
Just as everyone was arguing about whether to call the police, a taxi stopped by the roadside. The pockmarked man and Da Zhuang practically rolled out of the car.
As soon as they got out, they hugged the leg of the person closest to them, wailing, “Save me! Save me! That woman is a ghost! That woman is a devil!”
After just three days, the two were tortured beyond recognition.
They were weak, their faces were pale, and they trembled as they walked, as if their yang energy had been sucked dry.
Someone mocked them: “You guys are too timid. That girl runs a haunted house; she must have scary props. You two just got spooked.”
The pockmarked man and Da Zhuang were always arrogant and domineering. Seeing them like this was a rare sight, and everyone felt a sense of schadenfreude.
No matter what they said, no one believed them; instead, they were ridiculed.
The pockmarked man and Da Zhuang could only hang their heads in defeat.
Now that the haunted house had a dungeon, Li Miao thought about opening for business and selling tickets.
She was strapped for cash and couldn’t afford to build Ruhua’s brothel scenario. She had to make money first before she could build the second one.
No time like the present.
Li Miao straightened the sign at the main gate and started selling tickets on group-buying apps.
She did some research. Other horror escape rooms priced their tickets between 100 and 200 yuan, with some expensive ones going for two or three hundred.
Since Li Miao’s haunted house had just opened and wasn’t popular yet, she couldn’t set the price too high, so she settled on 88 yuan per person.
She wrote the copy, uploaded photos, and began her anxious wait.
Unfortunately, after waiting all night, no one bought a ticket.
Relying solely on group-buying apps won’t work, she realized. The channel is too singular.
Li Miao decided to go to a nearby print shop to print some flyers and distribute them at the nearby university.
University of Finance and Economics.
In a dorm room, four guys were discussing where to go for the weekend.
The dorm leader had a girlfriend. This weekend, the four guys from their dorm and the four girls from his girlfriend’s dorm planned to go out together.
With eight people in total, they needed a place with plenty of space.
“Go to the amusement park?” the dorm leader suggested.
“No way. The amusement park is packed on weekends. You have to queue for everything,” the second eldest shook his head.
“Then let’s go for a picnic,” the third eldest pushed up his glasses and suggested.
“Boring,” the second eldest rejected again. “Besides, we live in dorms and can’t cook. We can’t just bring snacks.”
True. So where should they go?
Just as everyone was frowning in frustration, the fourth roommate suddenly spoke up: “Let’s go to a haunted house.”
The fourth roommate was Wang Jian. He was the youngest but the strongest, standing 1.85 meters tall with rippling muscles. He was extremely burly.
Wang Jian loved escape rooms and horror survival games.
He had played through almost every haunted house in Fengdu.
This time, the second eldest didn’t shake his head. “A haunted house is a good idea, but we’ve played almost all the indoor ones.”
Wang Jian took out his phone and opened a group-buying app. “Let me search for any new places. Hmm? Fengdu Haunted House? That’s a big name.”
“Let me see, let me see.”
The other roommates gathered around to look with Wang Jian.
“It really is new. It only has one theme right now: Painted Skin. That’s too old-school,” the second eldest said with a look of disdain.
What era is this? Who plays Painted Skin anymore?
Other places had themes like Japanese horror, zombie survival, or Midnight Terror. Just hearing the names made your heart tremble.
The third eldest was the most thorough. He had already read the introduction. “Although the theme is old, the set design looks good, plus the tickets are cheap, and it’s close to school. We could check it out.”
Hearing that it was close, everyone instinctively looked at the address: No. 18 Huangquan Road, West Suburbs.
It was indeed close; their school was also in the West Suburbs.
“Huh?” the dorm leader suddenly exclaimed. “No. 18 Huangquan Road? Isn’t that a graveyard? When did it become a haunted house?”